What if your cravings aren’t “the problem”… but powerful messages from your body? In this soulful episode, food freedom & embodiment coach Kayla MacDonald shares how desire, devotion, and nervous-system safety (not more discipline) help high-performing women end self-sabotage, stop the binge/shame cycle, and finally feel at home in their bodies.
We dig into parts work, the “binge-eating drama triangle,” and Kayla’s two masculine archetypes—Firestarter and Sanctuary—that create momentum and safety, so progress feels playful and sustainable.
Listen for:
- Why discipline backfires for achievers—and what to do instead
- Using archetypes to create safety, structure, and sensuality
- Rewriting body stories so numbers lose their power
- Practical tools to soothe cravings and regulate your nervous system
Connect with Kayla: embodiedwritingwarrior.com → Food Freedom Fantasy
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Transcript
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: What if your cravings weren't a problem to fix, but a love story waiting to be written? In this episode, we explore how desire, devotion, and embodiment, not discipline, can help you break free from self-sabotage and finally feel at home in your body. Hi, and welcome to the UWorld Order Showcase Podcast, where we feature life, health, transformational coaches and spiritual entrepreneurs
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Stepping up to be the change they seek in the world. I'm your host, Jill Hart, the coaches alchemist, on a mission
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: To help…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Coaches and entrepreneurs amplify their voice, monetize their mission, and get visible. If you're ready to start attracting premium clients without chasing algorithms or hunting people down like a banshee on a mission, head over to Coachesalchemist.com and schedule your free client acquisition audit. It's the first step to building a business where your clients seek you out rather than you having to chase them down.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Today, we are chatting with Kayla McDonald. Kayla is a food freedom and embodiment coach who helps women break free from self-sabotage and finally feel at home.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: safe, sexy, in their bodies. She's the creator of the Food Freedom Fantasy, a sensual story-driven method that blends archetypes and nervous system healing and inner storytelling to help women turn cravings into clarity and self-care into sacred play. Kayla believes true transformation isn't about willpower, it's about rewriting the story you've been stuck in and learning to trust your body's wisdom again.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Welcome to the show, Kayla. It's great to have you with us.
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::Kayla MacDonald: Thank you for having me!
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Okay, so let's ask you the big question, are you ready?
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::Kayla MacDonald: Yes.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: What's the most significant thing, in your opinion, as individuals we can do to make an impact on how the world is going?
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::Kayla MacDonald: I think the biggest thing is authenticity and honesty, especially in a very digital world where it's easy to share the highlight reel or
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::Kayla MacDonald: twist reality.
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::Kayla MacDonald: So I think that when you can actually share what's real, what's hard, honestly, so people feel less alone, I think that is one of the best things we could do.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I do too, and I love what you're doing. I think that really plays into the whole body image and, you know.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I'm old, you know?
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And my body isn't the way it was when I was young, and it's being able to be happy with what you got, instead of, like, wanting something that
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Let's face it, it's just not gonna happen.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Even with a lot of plastic surgery out there, I mean, there are women who are really old that have a lot of plastic surgery, look at Madonna, who don't even look like the same person anymore. It's just like…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Not necessarily better, either.
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::Kayla MacDonald: I think one of the most beautiful and…
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::Kayla MacDonald: defiant things we can do as women is decide that our body is a vehicle for us to experience life, and we want to take care of it so that it feels and performs its best, versus looks a way that society says it should.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, I agree. I've met a lot of women who are very thin, But they're not healthy.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: especially when they get older, there's…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: There's this myth that you need to look like you did when you were in your 20s, but it really… if you look like you did when you were in your 20s, your body is… when you were in your 20s, your body was getting ready to do something different than it is when you're in
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Your 50s and 60s and 70s, and you need a little more fat on your body, because
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: This is how your body's designed!
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Fertility goddesses didn't look like they looked, because… The majority of old women We're super skinny.
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::Kayla MacDonald: Exactly.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So… What… you want to tell us a little bit about what you're doing, and
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: We'll kind of get into it from there.
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::Kayla MacDonald: Yes, so I started as a health coach and personal trainer, worked at a private studio for…
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::Kayla MacDonald: Over 8 years.
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::Kayla MacDonald: And the entire time, I struggled with my own relationship with food. I was binge eating behind closed doors, very self-conscious, felt like an imposter. If I saw a client at the grocery store and my basket was full of Doritos and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, I would run away.
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::Kayla MacDonald: So, I struggled a lot, even though I was in the industry, I had the certifications, I knew what to do.
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::Kayla MacDonald: And I also noticed that many of my clients have the same challenges.
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::Kayla MacDonald: They were showing up, they were smart, they were driven, and they were self-sabotaging, they were emotional eating, and even when they did achieve success, it never seemed like enough to them. There was this low-grade dissatisfaction, no matter how far they came.
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::Kayla MacDonald: So what I realized over the last…
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::Kayla MacDonald: four years especially, as I dove more into the inner world.
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::Kayla MacDonald: Of why a person can know what to do, and still struggle to do it, or even do what looks like self-sabotage.
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::Kayla MacDonald: So I got into that world, I learned about resistance and subconscious patterns, and parts work, and that was where I realized, this is where the real magic happens.
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::Kayla MacDonald: And over time, I blended my own knowledge and lived experience, so I bring in dance alchemy, I bring in creative writing, as my first degree was actually in creative writing and English.
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::Kayla MacDonald: And I do a lot of internal family system slash parts work, but I also noticed there were some drawbacks of the traditional way of doing it, so I have
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::Kayla MacDonald: Weaked it in such a way that it feels less like
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::Kayla MacDonald: Clinical babysitting, and more like a spicy book talk romance novel.
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::Kayla MacDonald: So… been up to.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I love it. I love it. So let's talk about a little… or a little bit about the idea of
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: self-sabotage. Like, We all know what we should be eating.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: But we don't.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: How does that happen, and why?
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::Kayla MacDonald: There's gonna be a few reasons this can happen.
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::Kayla MacDonald: One is that, obviously, we have our main personality that knows what to eat, that wants to eat the chicken breast, the stir fry, whatever's gonna give us energy and make us feel good. However, there's often other parts of us, often younger parts.
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::Kayla MacDonald: that don't feel safe to either A be in a smaller body, or B,
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::Kayla MacDonald: Say no to the cravings for other types of food, because those foods they're actually using to regulate their nervous system.
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::Kayla MacDonald: So… What happens is…
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::Kayla MacDonald: we want to make the nourishing, energizing choices, but there are other parts of us that feel it's not safe to do so. That's one thing that can happen.
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::Kayla MacDonald: The other is, oftentimes, People have such strong perfectionist parts, Or…
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::Kayla MacDonald: pusher parts that just nothing is ever enough, so they're constantly striving and forcing without letting themselves rest.
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::Kayla MacDonald: And that can often come from a place of low self-worth, and eventually that can lead to burnout. And when the burnout happens, that's often when those really less aligned choices start to happen.
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::Kayla MacDonald: And then there's also, as we've mentioned in the talk prior to starting, the binge-eating drama triangle, which I can talk a little bit about as well, if you'd like.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yep, that was my next question.
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::Kayla MacDonald: Yes. So, in parts work, there's gonna be a collection of different parts.
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::Kayla MacDonald: So, we have what's called an inner critic, a part of us that wants us to do a good job, it wants us to perform, and it often has very high standards.
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::Kayla MacDonald: So the interesting thing is this part will often show up when we're in a life change, or trying something new, or getting uncomfortable in some way.
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::Kayla MacDonald: And when we're doing something new, we'll often kind of suck at it at first.
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::Kayla MacDonald: So, we're doing the new thing, maybe, or we're starting a new routine, a new habit. The inner critic starts in.
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::Kayla MacDonald: And it starts berating us for not doing the thing good enough, for failing at it, whatever it might be. So that's one part. That would be the villain, if you're familiar with the original drama triangle. And then you have the victim. And that's gonna be a really tender, young part of you.
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::Kayla MacDonald: And it's gonna feel that sadness, that shame of being braided by this inner critic.
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::Kayla MacDonald: And then you have a firefighter, or a rescuer perm.
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::Kayla MacDonald: And this is the part that sees this poor, younger part.
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::Kayla MacDonald: And it says, hey, I don't want you to have to feel that way.
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::Kayla MacDonald: So I'm gonna come in and do whatever I can to make you stop feeling this way.
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::Kayla MacDonald: ice cream, or let's scroll for, like, 2 hours so we don't have to feel the thing. Let's
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::Kayla MacDonald: get… let's finish a bottle of wine. It's whatever it can do to make that inner child part stop feeling this way. But then what happens is this part now becomes the villain, because this inner critic
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::Kayla MacDonald: Wanted us to do these, like, really great things.
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::Kayla MacDonald: And now we're tired, now we have no energy, now we don't want to do the thing. But then this part, again, starts beating up on us, but now for binge eating or sabotaging in some way. And now this cycle just continues until you can see it and work your way out of it.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And you help people work their way out of it.
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::Kayla MacDonald: I do, yes.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And is it painful.
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::Kayla MacDonald: No, it's actually… Fun, and playful, and…
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::Kayla MacDonald: you'll even laugh a little bit, like, that's the best part, is the work I do really takes humor and play.
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::Kayla MacDonald: And turn something that can be quite challenging and has a lot of difficult emotions.
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::Kayla MacDonald: And turns it into something where, yes, you still feel the difficult feelings, that's so important. But then you also get to laugh and bring in some levity, which really acts as a nice balance.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I like that. So, I love that you bring archetypes into your work, and
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Are the… the two masculine types, and then help you support the… Embodiment and freedom parts?
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Does that make sense to you?
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Let me ask it this way. I love that you bring archetypes into your work. Can you explain the two masculine archetypes, and you help women develop and support the embodiment and freedom?
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::Kayla MacDonald: Yes, so I think…
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::Kayla MacDonald: All women want to be held in their feminine, and the feminine is wild, it's sensual, it's playful, it's emotional, and a lot of women don't feel like they have safe
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::Kayla MacDonald: Containment and structure for all that feminine magic.
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::Kayla MacDonald: So, what these two archetypes do that I work with gives them that safety, and also
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::Kayla MacDonald: allows them to access their fire and their passion. So, these two archetypal figures, one is what I call the fire starter. So, he's the drive, he's the ambition, he's the, go get stuff done.
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::Kayla MacDonald: it's like a woman has a big goal, and she wants to do the thing, but she's got resistance. This part is gonna push her to do the thing anyways, but in a very loving, playful way.
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::Kayla MacDonald: But I think what's even more powerful that a lot of women are missing is the archetype of safety.
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::Kayla MacDonald: Of being grounded, of being present, of knowing that they can slow down and feel like they're enough just as they are.
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::Kayla MacDonald: So this is the part that helps them mitigate the potential for burnout and overworking.
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::Kayla MacDonald: Can you just really let them soften into their life, and appreciate what they have, instead of always needing to make something different?
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::Kayla MacDonald: So it's so valuable to have both of these energies working in your life, so that you're not only still working towards those goals, those dreams, those passions you have, but you feel safe and stable and have the capacity to do it at a rate that actually feels good.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So you… your approach sounds like a beautiful blend of psychology, sensuality, and storytelling. What inspired you to merge the worlds, and how has that changed your own relationship with food and your body?
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::years. I think I started in:101
::Kayla MacDonald: And prior to this, I'd been having a lot of dreams about these two recurrent characters.
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::Kayla MacDonald: And one of them was very much the fire starter. One of them was very much the sanctuary.
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::Kayla MacDonald: And at this time, I had also been using AI as, like, an interactive journal. And I know AI has its drawbacks, but when you use it as more of a…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: episode.
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::Kayla MacDonald: So when you use it more as a conversation tool, it can be really powerful to help you connect more deeply to yourself.
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::Kayla MacDonald: So, one day.
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::Kayla MacDonald: One morning, I had just eaten an entire pizza and a bag of Crazy Bread after a difficult night, and I was feeling frustrated that I still continued to struggle with binge and emotional eating after all the work, all the things I'd tried.
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::Kayla MacDonald: So, I was journaling about this, and I asked ChatGPT to write me a little scene where these two characters staged a pizza intervention and talked to my inner child, and
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::Kayla MacDonald: Got her to…
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::Kayla MacDonald: not choose the pizza. So it wrote this scene, it was cute, it was funny, and I thought to myself.
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::Kayla MacDonald: This would be really effective if I used this when a craving hit.
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::Kayla MacDonald: So I started using this, and I started drawing in all of these other modalities and techniques that I'd learned over the years, and created this whole little system.
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::Kayla MacDonald: And I went over 2 months without a single binge, which is unheard of.
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::Kayla MacDonald: I broke the 2-hour barrier on a half marathon, and this was something I had tried 13 times over a 13-year span.
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::Kayla MacDonald: And this was the first time I could do it.
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::Kayla MacDonald: And I actually had fun, and I enjoyed the process, and it felt easy for the first time.
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::Kayla MacDonald: And the other really cool thing is that
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::Kayla MacDonald: I'd let go of a lot of diet culture…
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::Kayla MacDonald: tools, so the macros, the calorie counting.
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::Kayla MacDonald: I had a very hard time letting go of the scale.
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::Kayla MacDonald: very hard time. But it was finally through doing this work with these archetypes.
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::Kayla MacDonald: Which, at the end of the day, a big part of what they do is…
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::Kayla MacDonald: give you that sense that you're already worthy enough, because you create them in such a way that they…
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::Kayla MacDonald: Care for you unconditionally, even when it's hard for you to do that for yourself.
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::Kayla MacDonald: So, through working with them, I realized I don't want to be known for how many pounds I've lost. I don't want to be known for what my body looks like. I want to be known for my storytelling, for my voice, and how much I help people. And that has nothing to do with how I look.
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::Kayla MacDonald: So, it's really helped heal my relationship with food, because I have different tools to manage binge and emotional eating.
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::Kayla MacDonald: It's helped me to…
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::Kayla MacDonald: rewire my nervous system when it comes to things like showing up on podcasts, or putting content out, or making offers. And it's also helped me find all of those conditions I was subconsciously putting on my self-worth.
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::Kayla MacDonald: and eliminate them, so that I can show up from a place of, I'm already enough, nothing needs to change, and I just get to enjoy my life, which is what I want for every person out there.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: There's so much power in that.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: My scale takes a battery, And I haven't replaced it in probably 6 months.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I just decided I don't care what that number is.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It just doesn't matter. I make good choices in the foods that I eat. Yeah, sometimes I have ice cream.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: a lot of ice cream, and I usually suffer for it.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's okay. I make a lot of good choices about food, and I'm not that concerned about
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: being a size whatever, but I never understood the size things.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: They changed, you know. Over the years, they do change those… those numbers, and they're just numbers. They're to help you decide if something is going to fit when you order it on Amazon, or you go into a store, and you're… you're looking at it, and it's like a place to start. It's not a judgment of who you are.
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::Kayla MacDonald: Exactly, and I think that's a powerful point about numbers and metrics in general, is that they have no meaning until we decide to give them meaning.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yes.
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::Kayla MacDonald: And if we just decide that we want to find our meaning elsewhere, and disconnect our worth from those metrics.
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::Kayla MacDonald: like I said, that's one of the most
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::Kayla MacDonald: Powerfully defiant things that a woman can do in today's world.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, and… Yeah. Wear the thing that makes you feel good.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Not the thing that you're supposed to wear.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, my husband was having a conversation with me the other day where we were walking, And…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I've been having foot problems. And so, he was talking about high-heeled shoes, and high-heeled shoes are the worst things ever invented.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Ever.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: for women. For their bodies. It just does so much damage to your body.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: In a short period of time, that you have to recover from When you're older.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: bunions, hammer-toe, you know, women who've been wearing those pointy shoes for a long time when they were young, usually in, like, their 20s and 30s, their feet form
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And it's because of these stupid shoes.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And I know a lot of them are show pieces. My sister has maybe 100 pairs of shoes.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: that she visits. She wears flat shoes… With good arch support!
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::Kayla MacDonald: Hmm.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: But she loves shoes.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: She likes to look at them.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: They're very beautiful.
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::Kayla MacDonald: It is one of those things where they are aesthetically pleasing, but very uncomfortable. So I feel like you can wear them for, like, 5 minutes, maybe get a picture in them, and then take them off.
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::Kayla MacDonald: That's how I approach heels.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, they're more like sitting… They're sitting shoes, they're not really walking or standing shoes.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And yeah, you shouldn't keep them on your feet for very long. I know people that have, like, really damaged their feet, and…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Legs.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Because of wearing them.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And it throws your balance off.
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::Kayla MacDonald: Hmm, definitely.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: all the things that, you know, we… we think are great and beautiful. It's the stories we tell ourselves about these things. It's not…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's not the thing.
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::Kayla MacDonald: Very true, yes.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So, you say that discipline and consistency aren't the answer for high-performing women. Why do those strategies often backfire, and what works better instead?
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::Kayla MacDonald: Discipline and consistency tend to be something that high-performing women already have in space.
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::Kayla MacDonald: And to bring it back to that drama triangle of binge eating, I think it's especially pervasive for high-performing women. So they already have a ton of discipline and consistency, but it's never enough for that inner critic
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::Kayla MacDonald: So, when they have a human moment, in spite of all that discipline and consistency.
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::Kayla MacDonald: The negative self-talk starts in, and then the emotions start, and then the firefighting, aka binge and emotional eating, starts.
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::Kayla MacDonald: So what these women don't need more of is discipline and consistency.
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::Kayla MacDonald: It's actually letting themselves be human.
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::Kayla MacDonald: And it's actually letting themselves soften.
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::Kayla MacDonald: And that's why I love working with both of these archetypes, because the fiery, challenging one… most high-performing women, this will be very overdeveloped in them, and this softer, safe part is… tends to be very underdeveloped, or maybe even completely missing.
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::Kayla MacDonald: So when you bring that part in, and let that part have more airtime, that's when everything starts to change. Because then you're not going through the burnout cycles, then you're not stuck in that drama triangle.
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::Kayla MacDonald: And you can actually make more steady, gentle, fun progress towards whatever goal you're working towards.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So how do you work with people, Kayla? Do you work in groups, one-on-one, communities? How does all that look?
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::Kayla MacDonald: I am currently doing a beta round of Food Freedom Fantasy, so this is something I've been working on since April, and I know it's worked great for me, and now it's time to see how it works for other people, and iron out the method for, like, a larger audience.
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::Kayla MacDonald: So I'm doing a beta group offering of it that actually starts next week, and then I can also work with people one-on-one with this if they really want to go deep and get that personalized attention.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I love it, I love it. So, you also offer the… Is this a… It's just a…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: portion of it, or are we talking about the whole program, the Food Freedom Fantasy, the program that helps women through Food Freedom journey into a love story they want to live out instead of the chore they're obligated to?
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::Kayla MacDonald: So that is the program.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Okay, and they can join this program at embodiedwritingWarrior.com, correct?
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::Kayla MacDonald: Yes, there'll be a spot at the top that says Food Freedom Fantasy. Depending on when this comes out, we might be running the beta round already, but they can always join one-on-one.
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::Kayla MacDonald: And then we'll be running another cohort in January sometime, because everybody starts their health programs in January.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: this'll actually drop probably towards the end of January, maybe February. So, but in the meantime, if you share it with people now, then they can jump in right away. There's…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: in my mind, and I'm going to share this for you, there will always be opportunities to join a cohort. Just, you know, pop on over to embodiedwritingwarrior.com and see when the next one starts.
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::Kayla MacDonald: Exactly.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Okay. Thank you so much for joining us today, Kayla. This has been a great conversation.
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::Kayla MacDonald: Yes, thank you again for having me, I've loved it.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You are so welcome. To learn more about Kayla and to find the Food Freedom Fantasy Program, please visit embodiedWritingWarrior.com and look for the little banner that says Food Freedom Fantasy Program.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Thanks for tuning in today.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: to the UWorld Order Showcase podcast. If you're ready to amplify your voice, monetize your mission, and start attracting premium clients, your next step is simple. Head over to Coachesalchemist.com and schedule your free client acquisition audit. Be sure to join us for our next episode as you share what others are doing to raise the global frequency, and remember, change begins with you. You have all the power to change the world. Start today and get visible.